Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday August 25, 2011 @01:58PM
from the oh-she's-always-theatening-people dept.

jfruhlinger writes "Hurricane Irene is bearing down on the heavily populated U.S. Northeast Corridor. If you work in IT, you know that there are few things that are worse for electronics than water; so, what's your plan? Tom Henderson has come up with a checklist, which sensibly includes backing everything up, twice; not that you have time for it now, but for future reference you might want to consider just moving your whole data center to a location that's been conveniently pre-hardened, like a water tower or a boiler room." Note that Irene has been no joke in the Caribbean; in Puerto Rico (with relatively modern infrastructure), about a third of the island lost power.

Yeah, no worries here, either. I live in central Ohio (close enough to the Mississippi/St.Lawrence continental divide that I've actually crossed it while walking the dog really -- yes, really), and I estimate that for a hurricane to get this far inland, this far north, and this far above sea level, not to mention crossing the entire Appalachian mountain system, with any significant punch left, the storm in question would have to be at least a category twelve, probably more like fifteen, on the scale where Katrina was a mere five.

Recently moved there, did you? Hurricane Ike [clipsandcomment.com] did a pretty good number on central Ohio despite only being a category 4 storm. 2008 wasn't that long ago either.

About the only accurate part of your post is the crossing the Appalachian limitation... Hurricanes that reach Ohio tend to dodge the Appalachians by way of that pesky Gulf of Mexico.